SGA holds first meeting

As many students came back for their first day of classes on Monday, Missouri Western’s Student Government Association also came back for its first meeting of the 2016-2017 school year.
The meeting, which occurred at 5:30 p.m. in Blum 220, was not the Guy/Samenus administration’s first SGA meeting, however. The new administration convened the last SGA meeting of the spring 2016 semester.
The meeting covered a variety of topics during the meeting. SGA President Alec Guy said the meeting dealt with things that needed to be dealt with.
“They’re kind of housekeeping legislation, so things that we needed to go through and address that hadn’t necessarily been before,” Guy said.
Picking up a piece of legislation from last semester’s final meeting, SGA approved the Electronics Student Club, a group for electronics and technology majors to network.
Aside from approving legislation, several pieces of legislation were introduced at Monday’s meeting. One proposal was to approve the SGA budget for this year, which includes an increase to the St. Joseph Transit Program which may be seeing rising costs in the coming years due to a new policy implemented by the city of St. Joseph.
Another change in the SGA budget came with the addition of $6,500 for the year-long rental of the Student Suite at the renovated Spratt Stadium. SGA will use it first to view a home game, but then will award the suite out to other groups of students to use the room for the remainder of the year.
Other pieces of legislation introduced would remove policies which have largely already been in replaced. For instance, after the previous administration of Ida Haefner revamped and revised the collection and use of student fee money collected under the Student Success Act (SSA), a bill introduced at Monday’s meeting would remove the old policy from the books.
Another bill would remove SGA’s Scholarship Policy for its executive board as that policy has been replaced by a payroll system. Lastly, a bill would remove the Jacob Scott Award Procedure since other leadership and service awards have been established in its place as well.
Executive Vice President Connor Samenus, who ran the meeting, said it went well.
“I thought last night’s meeting went really well and a lot more effective than the first meeting — of course, that comes with time. I thought the legislation went over really well and the senators were attentive.”
President Guy felt likewise.
“I think it went well,” Guy said. “There were definitely a few hiccups just because this is our first meeting and kind of getting back in the swing of things, but other than that I thought we covered all the bases that we needed to.”
SGA meets every Monday at 5:30 p.m. in Blum, but will not be meeting next Monday because of Labor Day. The next SGA meeting will be on Sept. 12.